You’ve
heard it said: “What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.”
Sounds
racy,and exciting. I heard of a minister of a small country church who noticed
that about half of her small congregation was missing one Sunday morning. A
little investigative work led her to discover three families had taken a trip
to Vegas together.
The
Sunday they returned, the joke was on them. She ribbed them all by beginning
her sermon with a harsh tone. “Last week, you may recall,” she began, “We
talked about the demonic dangers of gambling.”
She
took a deep breath and gazed intently at the congregation. Then she continued,
“This week, we’ll talk about the powerful pitfalls of not giving your Vegas
winnings to the church.”
The
wayward parishioners squirmed uncontrollably for a few moments, until the preacher
stopped staring them down and broke into a grin. “Nah, she said, the sermon’s
really about helping kids come to know Jesus.”
After
church, one of the Vegas gang teased her, “Okay, so how did you find out where
we were?”
Most
of us have pretty clear compartments to our lives. Vegas doesn’t usually come
to church. And church doesn’t come to other parts of our lives nearly often
enough.
We
wear different hats ― boy scout leader, businessman, church volunteer, wife,
son, nature enthusiast.
Have
you had the experience of seeing someone in a grocery store in their casual clothes?
Maybe you see your dentist training her dog at the park and don’t recognize her
without the white lab coat. Or you’re in the check-out aisle with your kids’
principal who doesn’t usually wear gym shorts to his office. Our faith can
pretty easily become another hat we wear.
Colossians
is a letter, likely written by the apostle Paul, to the churches of Colossae and
surrounding towns. The Colossian Christians were beginning to explore some extra-curricular
faith practices.
They
were intrigued by different philosophies and curious about practicing
astrology. Paul writes to persuade them that Christ deserves our full-hearted, whole-minded
devotion. And he uses the analogy of clothing to get his point across.
“When
you get dressed spiritually,” Paul writes, “Don’t just wear a little of this
and a little of that, a little astrology on your Tee-shirt or a 1-900-PSYCHIC
on your baseball cap. No! Paul says, we’re God’s chosen ones, we’ve got to be
clothed completely in the love of Christ.”
Paul
insists that faith in Christ is not something that is put on here and taken off
there; our faith is the hat we constantly wear. No matter where we are! But how
often are we wearing our faith?
Jill
is a pastor. She lives next door to a woman named Beth. Beth hasn’t been to
church more than about three times in her life.
Jill
has talked to Beth across the front yard many times. She’s even kept Beth’s
daughter when Beth had to work late. They’ve gotten to know each other pretty
well. Or so it seemed.
One
spring weekend just before Easter, Beth and Jill were standing outside in the driveway
chatting. Beth said, “You know, I have
never been to church for Easter, and I
think I’d like to go this year. Jill, do you go to church anywhere around
here?”
Jill’s
jaw hit the sidewalk. Her face turned red as a beet, and she stammered for how to
respond. Finally, she blurted out, “Oh my,
Beth. I am so embarrassed. How is it
that I have never told you that I am the minister of the church down the
street?”
Oh
my, indeed. Oh, my Lord, have mercy. Jill’s Christian hat hadn’t made it on her
head to the neighbor’s house.
“Whatever you do,
whether in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving
thanks to God the Father through him.” Paul
urges the Colossian Christians and us
to speak and to act everywhere and every time in the name of Jesus Christ.
Remember
dot to dots from kids’ restaurant placemats, where you get the 4 crayons and
activities until your pancakes come? You put your pencil to the paper and
connect dot #1 to #2, and then dot #2 to dot #3, and so on, pretty soon, a new
picture emerges.
As
a church, we are asking God for more: more revelation of God in our personal
lives, more presence of God in our lives together as a church, more strength, more
power, more joy, more love, more God!
More
happens when we connect the dots. In your bulletin today on the sermon outline,
there is the most simple dot-to-dot you can get!
By
dot #1, write down something that you do at least once a week, if not every
day. Maybe it’s read the paper, or go to lunch at the same corner café, or get
on Facebook, or go to the gym. Name your dot.
Now,
draw a line between the dot you’ve named and dot #2. Dot #2 is your faith. Make drawing this line
your prayer. Ask God, “Would you show me
how to connect my faith to this
regular activity in my life? Would you show me more of you while I’m doing this?”
Colossians
says, “Whatever you do, whether in word
or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
When
Scripture says “in the name of”, it
means “in the presence of.” It means:
Whatever you do, do it in the presence of Jesus himself, as if he’s really there. Because he is. He’s
right here, and he’s out there in your house, and in your regular life.
In
our Tuesday daily devotional reading this past week, it talked about noticing
God’s presence in our day to day living.
The devotional said, “We don’t think about it, or see it very often,but
people and God give us gifts every day.
Our very lives are gifts. People bless us, and we’re so busy, we just
blow by it and don’t even recognize a blessing when someone hands it to us!
People
let us cut into a line of traffic. A greeter at Wal-Mart holds a door or gives
you a cart. Maybe you don’t get the speeding ticket you earned! Someoine
catches your child swiping M & Ms and talks with her! You have a job. You
are out of work, but can volunteer at the animal shelter. Someone talks to you
at the gym. Lunch with your friends at school is fun. Someone sends you a
thank-you note. You get to spend an hour reading.
And
then the devotional asked us to carry a 3 x 5 card in our pocket that day. It
asked us to write a short note about every time we experienced a blessing from
God. But then the next part of that exercise was even more important. It said to whisper a thank you to God after
each of those blessings and to ask God to bless that person.
So
I followed through with this exercise and was amazed at the many ways that I
experienced God throughout that day.
The
first thing that happened was when I met with other United Methodist pastors
for our monthly share group meeting. We
met at Pleasantville United Methodist Church and the pastor celebrated Holy
Communion with us.
He
then gave us a tour of the church and when he showed us the church kitchen, we
noticed a wonderful smell coming from two large roasters. And he surprised us
by saying, “I have some comfort food that
I want us to enjoy today. Homemade chicken and noodles.” And together in
the church basement, we enjoyed a wonderful lunch together. I thanked God for
those unexpected blessings and I asked God to bless this pastor and his
congregation.
I
then made some visits at the hospital and one of the members I visited said to
me, “You have the nicest smile.” I
closed by offering a prayer for healing for this member of our church.
By
late afternoon, my 3 x 5 card was already full of many ways that I had
experienced God’s presence that day. As I was reflecting on these blessings, I
felt led to call a dear friend of mine, a retired United Methodist pastor whose
wife passed away in early January. I just wanted to see how he was doing.
As
soon as he heard my voice on the phone, he said, “Robert, I was actually thinking of calling you today.” And for the
next several minutes over the phone, he was able to talk about the funeral and
how he was adjusting to life without his wife by his side.
And
then he blessed me with a very moving story. He said that over the years, his
wife would only use cash at the grocery store. And if she didn’t spend all of
her cash that week for groceries, she would put the leftover money in a little
tin container. This went on over several
decades.
When
his wife stopped going to the grocery store because of health problems, they
had forgotten all about that tin container. A couple of months ago, when she
needed to move into assisted living, they stumbled upon that tin
container. It had been tucked back on a
shelf in a closet. She said that she had never counted the money and out of
curiosity, wanted him to count it.
And
he did. That tin container was stuffed with ones, fives, tens, and even
twenties. Over all those years, she had collected $1,000 from unused grocery
money.
So
he said to his wife, “You should take
this money and buy something nice for yourself.” And she said, “No. If I die before you, I want you to take
the family out to a really nice restaurant.”
The
night before the funeral last month, he took his family to a really expensive
restaurant in Columbus. And that’s when
he told them, “You’re mom is paying for
this dinner. She wanted us to be together tonight as a family.”
As
he told me this story over the phone, he was crying, I was crying. It was a
holy moment.
So
that was my Tuesday this past week.
Our
Unbinding Your Soul church-wide focus is helping me to connect the dots in my
life and to become more aware of how God is part of my day to day routine. This
is what Jesus helped his disciples to experience as they followed him. He helped them to see God at work in their
day to day living. He opened their eyes to see the more that God has in mind
for each and every one of us.
Bill’s
church began a summer ministry to children. Lots of the kids in their neighborhood
are on the school district’s Free and Reduced Lunch Program during the school
year.
The
church people realized that these kids were going without those subsidized
meals in the summer time. So, they started passing out lunches to the neighbor
kids. Pretty soon, they were driving a little bus around, passing out lunches
all over the community.
Bill
was the bus driver for the program. He would pull the bus up to a low-income apartment
complex or trailer park and honk the horn, letting the kids know they had arrived.
As the kids came up to the bus, Bill would smile at them. He’d hand them their
lunch, and say, “Have a nice day!”
One
day Bill came home from his lunch delivery rounds to find his wife in tears.
She had been teaching the third graders at Vacation Bible School at their
church that morning. Now she was sitting in a heap on their living room floor.
Bill
ran over to her, “What’s wrong?’ “Today,”
she said, “I asked the kids in my class
at Vacation Bible School to raise their hands if they know Jesus loves them.
And two little boys did not raise their hands.”
“Okay,” Bill said, still
unsure what the problem was. “Bill,”
his wife wept, “No one has ever told
those boys Jesus loves them!”
A
light went on in Bill’s head, and a flood gate burst forth in Bill’s heart. “Oh,
my!” he thought. “The children on my
lunch route may not know either!” Bill connected the dots.
So
the next day on his route, Bill drove up to the apartment, and the trailers,
and he honked the bus horn. When the children came out to get their lunches, he
smiled at them just the same. But when he handed them their lunches, he did not
say “Have a nice day!” Bill said, “Jesus loves you.”
What
if what happened in church didn’t stay in church? What if we let God connect the
dots?
No comments:
Post a Comment